Silence, motor, action!

Navona Square: “home” of Eitch Borromini and place of dreams, on film and paper.

The Colosseum bursts into the imagination of Seventh Art’s lovers with the kolossal “Ben Hur” by William Wyler, the 11 Oscar picture whose chariot races are shot mainly at Circus Mazimus and Circus Massenzio. The Trevi Fountain enters the world history of Cinema thanks to “La dolce vita” by Fellini and the famous Anita Ekberg and Marcello Mastroianni.’s dip. The Lungotevere (“along the Tiber” street) becomes a fascinating background of a car chase signed Daniel Craig in “007 Specter” while posters of Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck’s “Roman Holiday” around the Eternal City on the storical Vespa, inevitable in the best souvenir shops.

Yet, while the Trevi Fountain takes the imagination of Directors, Navona Square is the one winning the hearts of enthusiasts. Mainly, as the location of “Angels and Demons” – but also of “Eat, pray, love” and “The talented Mr. Ripley”. Often, starting from the books behind the scripts.

In fact – and after eight months of observation of hashtag, mentions and quotes -, in 2021 Instagram was crowning Navona Square as Queen of world literature’s cult places. Beating fourty-nine rivals, some of which really important - as (in descending order): the Weeping Glen of the Scottish Highlands, one of the marvelous backgrounds of Harry Potter’s adventures; the Northern Irish Giant’s Causeway, among the locations of “Game of Thrones”; King’s Cross railway station in London, with its Platform 9 e ¾ and the train for Hogwarts; the Gloucestershire’s Forest of Dean, source of inspiration for J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth, and Yorkshire’s Top Withens farmhouse, which Emily Brontë used for the setting of “Wuthering Heights”. And, this, in a list which includes also the Northern Irish Mourne Mountains, protagonists of “The Chronicles of Narnia”; the Great Neck County, in Long Island, husing the villa in which Francis Scott Fitzgerald started to write “The Great Gatsby” and the suggestive ruins – still inhabited by bats – of Whitby Abbey, on the coast of Yorkshire, where Bram Stoker wrote his “Dracula”. We are talking about more than 395 thousand mentions and an advantage of 11 thousand quotes over other places, all thanks to Navona’s Fountain of Four Rivers. A masterpiece by Gian Lorenzo Bernini and a legendary part of his rivalry with Francesco Borromini – the creator of both Sant’Agnese in Agone Church, which dominates the Square, and the Mansion next door, which houses Eitch’s spaces – that we have told on these pages.

Many, the Roman film sets got into the Cinema History. Just think of “Rome, Open City” by Roberto Rossellini, “Bicycle Thieves” and “Umberto D.” by Vittorio de Sica, “Big deal on Madonna Street” by Mario Monicelli or “The Great Beauty” by Paolo Sorrentino. Before the pandemic crisis, movies filmed in Rome were 1.511 – followed at great distance by Milan (352), Venice (287), Naples (227) and Turin (173). In the midst of all this, Navona Square – with a record, in the hearts of readers and viewers from all over the world, that still stands today. Including the terrace from which in 1963 Sophia Loren was looking out in “Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow” by Vittorio de Sica and from which, during the first 2020 lockdown, a young man played Ennio Morricone’s music for “Once upon a Time in America” with his electric guitar.

Our Mansion, Eitch Borromini, awaits you. With its stories and its spectacular view of the Square and the Roman skyline – from our rooms, from the Restaurant and, above all, from one of the most beautiful Roof Top in the whole city. To find again beloved plots and protagonists, as travelers “of the same substance that dreams are made of”.